For more information click on this link. http://www.detraktor.com Spyware can be placed on a phone without someone having physical contact with the phone. See detracktor.com for details. Stop Cell Phone Tracking and Bugging with the DETRACKTOR. The DETRACKTOR will stop your cell phone or tablet from being used as a tracking and/or bugging device. Tracking and bugging of cell phones or tablets is now easily done by anyone, including non-government agencies and individuals. Cell phone spying software is readily available on the internet. A quick search on google for cell phone spying will surprise you. Stingray (Harris corp) is an IMSI catcher device. Many other companies make these devices such as PKI and Septier. IMSI catchers can be bought directly online from China for $1800.00. These devices are capable of locating and tapping cell phones as well as changing the settings on your phone. The problem is that this technology is not only available to law enforcement. Just like cell phone tapping software was originally only available to law enforcement this technology has not remained out of other’s hands.

Spyware, whether distributed by criminals, advertisers or even states, is a constant nuisance. Yet, some types have the technician in me marvel. Why? Because they’re innovative and intelligently designed. Recently, I came upon an approach that might interest web users, supermarket shoppers and whistleblowers alike. A single sound can betray them all (with a little bad luck).

If you regularly read the news from the world of technology, you’ll eventually develop a thicker skin. They found another security hole in Windows? That’s barely enough to elicit a shrug these days. Over 230 Android apps are listening for an inaudible sound to track me? Now that’s interesting. The principle behind this approach is easily explained yet hard to implement. A sound source (TV or PC speaker, speakers in a supermarket etc.) sends out a very high-frequency sound which gets picked up by the microphone in your cell phone (or laptop) and is then processed by an already installed spyware app. The app then phones home to report on your current activity, e.g. which website you’re viewing, and this data stream can include anything that might be of interest like your device ID, phone number, MAC address and more.

But why wait for a signal? Simple, it’s not about the listening device but the sender. These ultrasonic beacons help spyware authors link multiple devices together across physical boundaries, e.g. to find out what you’re viewing on your PC, not just your cell phone, and to aggregate this data to form a bigger picture. Different contents will simply trigger slightly different sounds. This may sound like science fiction but the concept has already been used by Asian fast food restaurants with apps that saw millions of downloads.

For all of this to work, a big infrastructure is required. First, the spyware has to be distributed either by bundling it with a big name app or by disguising it as a small useful tool. Next, the ultrasonic beacons have to be rolled out. This process is quite straightforward as sounds can easily be embedded into page ads. Once users visit the affected pages, the sounds get played and the aforementioned process triggered. It’s tracking heaven for advertisers eager to personalize their ads! There are also other use cases.

Fast food restaurants could play a sound at regular intervals through their store speakers to figure out who their regular customers are. Department stores could play different sounds for their various departments to determine how long customers are staying in each section. Once multiple businesses start to cooperate, it’ll be possible to reconstruct the path each customer took as they moved through the city. I know marketers who would pay a lot of money to get this data!

Is your cell phone listening to your TV?

It’s also feasible that this technology could be used to locate users who are using anonymization services on the web. Picture a guy that is being persecuted and heavily relies on Tor and VPN to stay hidden. The persecutors could simply create a website they know their target will be interested in and put it on the public Internet or the Darknet. Once their target visits the page, an ultrasonic sound gets played, is then picked up by the target’s cellphone (and the installed spyware app) – and the hunt has just become a lot easier.

Currently, this technology is still in its infancy it seems and there is an ongoing debate about whether this type of software is illegal and should be considered malware. If it were to be implemented as part of a shopping app, e.g. to enable discounts, it might be perfectly legal even if severe restrictions may apply. There have been no confirmed cases of it being used in television programs yet but it’s doable. Once again, legislators are venturing into unknown territory and will have to come up with an adequate response. Another good reason to only install apps from trusted sources and developers and to pay more attention to your pets as living spyware detectors. “Found another one, Fido?” “Woof!”

What I would like to know: do you play close attention to what apps you’re installing on your cellphone or do you blindly trust in Apple’s, Google’s and other distributors’ abilities to reliably detect and filter out spyware?

The computers are watching.

Imagine if you lost your keys and instead of fishing around in the couch cushions, you could just pull out your phone and search for them. Just a quick, textual query with a quick response that they’re on your desk, you doofus. This is not only possible; it’s possible now, and it’s almost as intriguing as it is terrifying.

Today at Microsoft Build, the software giant’s annual conference for developers, Microsoft showed off exactly this sort of tech. By melding things that have already been around for a few years—machine-learning powered image recognition and consumer-grade cameras—with the ludicrous computing horsepower in the cloud, Microsoft is able to index people and things in a room in real time. What that means, practically, is that if you can point a camera at it, you can search it:

Once you can identify people and objects by feeding the computers images of Bob and jackhammers so they can learn what each of those things look like, you can start applying a framework of rules and triggers on top of the real world. Only [Certified Employees] can carry the [Jackhammer] and [Bob] is a [Certified Employee] so [Bob] is allowed to carry the [Jackhammer]. The limits to what kind of rules you can make are effectively arbitrary.

It’s extremely impressive, and Microsoft’s pitch for using this technology on factory floors and in hospitals belies another truth: it’s also extremely terrifying. The cliché here is to gesture at notions of Skynet, but the real dangers are far more grounded than some kill-all-humans fantasy.

The real dangers are far more grounded than some kill-all-humans fantasy

The privacy implications, which Microsoft didn’t venture to mention on stage, are chilling even in a hospital or factory floor or other workplace. Yes, systems like this could ensure no patient collapses on a floor out of sight or that new hires aren’t juggling chainsaws for fun. But it also would make it trivial to pull up statistics on how any employee spends her day—down to the second. Even if it is ostensibly about efficiency, this sort of data can betray all sorts of private information like health conditions or employees interpersonal relationships, all that with incredible precision and at a push of a button. And if the system’s not secure from outside snooping? Woof. The concerns explode exponentially.

And of course the creepiness only increases if you imagine the spread of this technology to places like the home,though at least there users would theoretically have to opt in. That is, unless a hacker or company decides to surreptitiously apply this sort of computer vision to the cameras already in your home or just steal the footage and apply the machine eyes after the fact.

it’s a sort of instant, god-like omnipotence

Perhaps most concerning though, is the idea of this tech in the public sphere, where relative privacy is a given but only thanks to obscurity. You can be effectively “alone” in a mall or coffee shop only because it is difficult to look for you. If applied to security systems and other live video feeds, this sort of technology gives those with the power to search through it a sort of instant, god-like omnipotence. That has chilling implications whether that power is in the hands of a disgruntled IT guy or the FBI. All that’s to say nothing of the implications for ad-targeting, and all the companies that would have a vested interest on building a dossier about you specifically, not because you are particularly interesting but just because you buy things sometimes.

Artists and technologists have been grappling with this coming privacy nightmare for years with anti-surveillance gear that runs the gamut from makeup to glasses to gadgets. It’s been easy to dismiss these measures as art or dystopian fantasy, but it’s getting more difficult not to take them seriously.

There’s no doubt, of course, that dynamic image recognition would have huge benefits and could save countless lives much in the way Microsoft’s demo indicates. But without strict rules or regulations, these smart cameras could cross all kinds of privacy lines before we even know it.

The tech is moving fast, and sooner or later, cameras like this are undoubtedly coming to a workplace near you, and Skynet is the least of our worries.